The Tomb of the Cybermen (TV story)

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The Tomb of the Cybermen was the first story of Season 5 of Doctor Who. It is currently the earliest Second Doctor serial to survive in its entirety.

Synopsis

An archeological expedition to the planet Telos discovers the final resting place of the Cybermen, frozen in tombs for eternity. The Second Doctor would like it to remain that way, but some members of the expedition seem to have other ideas.

Plot

Episode 1

File:Tomb ep1.JPG
An Earth expedition makes a shocking discovery

The Doctor and Jamie show their new travelling companion Victoria Waterfield the inside of the TARDIS, though she scarcely believes it can travel through time and space. The ship takes off from Skaro, the group ready for their next adventure.

On the planet Telos, an archeological expedition uses explosives to uncover the entrance to a city, hidden in the side of a mountain. When a member of the expedition touches the huge metal doors, he is electrocuted. Immediately afterwards, the TARDIS lands nearby, and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on the scene. Captain Hopper, the expedition's pilot, holds them at gunpoint until the Doctor convinces them they had nothing to do with the death. Viner, the assistant to expedition leader Parry, accuses the Doctor of being part of a rival expedition. Parry explains that they are here to find the remains of the Cybermen, who apparently died out centuries before. The expedition is funded by Kaftan, who is accompanied by her giant manservant Toberman and her colleague Eric Klieg. The Doctor, now that he knows that the Cybermen are involved, decides to accompany the group. He uses a small device to check that the doors are now safe, and Toberman's great strength swings them open. Entering the darkened inner chamber, they find a control panel with a series of levers and switches and a large, hidden doors and a sealed hatch. The Doctor opens the doors using the levers, which operate on symbolic logic. Kleig is resentful that the Doctor is able to deduce this instead of him. The hatch, however, remains sealed, so the members of the expedition split up and explore.

In the control room, the Doctor gives Klieg the clue he needs to reactivate the controls to restore power to the base. Victoria, Viner and Kaftan come across a chamber with a sarcophagus-like box facing a projection device that was apparently used to revitalise the Cybermen. When Victoria curiously climbs into the sarcophagus, Kaftan operates the controls and seals Victoria in the sarcophagus. When Viner confronts her, she denies she did anything. The Doctor shows up and frees Victoria. In another room, Jamie and Haydon find a small silver caterpillar-like object on the floor. When Haydon operates the control panel in the room, a wall lights up with a hypnotic pattern that puts Jamie into a trance. Before the Doctor can intervene, a Cyberman slides into view and a gun fires, killing Haydon.

Episode 2

File:Tomb ep2.JPG
The tomb

The Cyberman slides out of sight again. The Doctor deduces that the room is a testing range, and that a gun at the back was shooting a mock-up Cyberman, and Haydon got in the way. Victoria finds the metal caterpillar, which the Doctor identifies as a cybermat, and advises her to leave it alone. Instead, she places it in her handbag. Parry now decides to abandon the expedition and return to Earth. At this point, however, Hopper returns and angrily reveals that someone has sabotaged the rocket ship — no one will be leaving until he can effect repairs and no one will be allowed aboard the ship until his crew has done so.

Kleig believes he has found the logical sequence to open the hatch, but fails again, until the Doctor surreptitiously presses a few additional buttons, helping him along. Leaving Kaftan and Victoria behind, the others descend down the hatch. They find a vast chamber beneath, with a multistorey structure containing cells of frozen Cybermen, entombed in suspended animation. Back in the control room, Kaftan has drugged Victoria's coffee and shuts the hatch. Kleig, in the meantime, has activated more controls in the tomb and the ice begins to melt. Kleig shoots Viner when the latter tries to stop him, and holds the rest at bay while they watch the Cybermen return to life. Kleig reveals his real agenda. He and Kaftan belong to the Brotherhood of Logicians, who possess great intelligence but no physical power. He is certain the Cybermen will be grateful for their revival and ally themselves with him, providing that physical power.

Back in the control room, the cybermat in Victoria's handbag revives and attacks Kaftan, rendering her unconscious. Victoria grabs Kaftan's pistol and shoots it, but she doesn't know how to re-open the hatch, so leaves the city to find Hopper. Down in the tombs, the Cybermen file past the humans, ignoring them, and free their leader, the Cybercontroller from his cell. When Kleig steps forward to take the credit for reviving them, the Cybercontroller grabs and crushes his hand, forcing him to his knees and declaring, "You belong to us. You will be like us."

Episode 3

File:Tomb ep3.JPG
The Doctor faces the Cybercontroller

The Cybermen recognise the Doctor, whose involvement in prior invasion attempts is recorded in their computer records. The Doctor realises that the tombs were an elaborate trap. The Cybermen were waiting for beings intelligent enough to decipher the controls needed to free them. The expedition will be converted into Cybermen in preparation for a new invasion of Earth and Kleig, to his horror, will be the first.

In the control room, Hopper and Callum have figured out the electronics that will open the hatch. Hopper descends into the tombs, and uses smoke grenades to distract the Cybermen while the humans make their escape. They barely manage to scramble back to the control room and shut the hatch before the Cybermen can follow. Toberman, however, is left behind. Kleig and Kaftan are moved into the testing range to keep them out of mischief while the others decide on their next course of action. There, Kleig prises a weapon out of the hands of the Cyberman target, an X-ray laser he calls a cybergun. Outside, the expedition is threatened by cybermats released by the Cybermen below. The Doctor manages to rig electrical cables from the control panel to create a magnetic field that disables the cybermats. Even as one threat is eliminated, Kleig and Kaftan step out armed with the cybergun, which Kleig fires.

Episode 4

File:Tomb ep4.JPG
The Cybermens secret weapon

Kleig hits Callum in the shoulder, and tells the others that he can still negotiate with the Cybermen. Kleig opens the hatch and calls for the Cybercontroller. The Cybercontroller climbs up, accompanied by Toberman, who, unknown to the others, has been partially cyberconverted and under Cyberman control. The Cybercontroller moves slowly, as his energy is running low — in fact, most of the Cybermen have been ordered back to their tombs to conserve power. Holding the cybergun on the Cybercontroller, Kleig says he will allow it to be revitalised in the sarcophagus if the Cybermen help him conquer the Earth. The Cybercontroller agrees. Unfortunately, a revitalised Cybercontroller is too strong and breaks out of the sarcophagus. Telepathically signalling Toberman, the latter reveals his true allegiances and knocks Kleig unconscious. The Cybercontroller, in turn, picks up Kleig's cybergun and kills Kaftan when she tries to block its return to the tombs.

The death of his mistress, however, seems to shake Toberman out of his controlled state. Toberman struggles with the Cybercontroller and hurls it into a control panel, apparently killing it. The Doctor wants to make sure the Cybermen are no longer a threat, and goes back down into the tombs with Toberman and Jamie. Kleig regains consciousness and sneaks down with the cybergun while the others tend to Callum. He forces the Doctor away from the controls that will refreeze the Cybermen, declaring that he will be the new Controller, and revives them again. Kleig intends to turn the three over to the Cybermen for spare parts, but even as he says this, a revived Cyberman throttles Kleig from behind and kills him. Toberman fights and kills this Cyberman and the Doctor freezes the other Cybermen, hopefully for good this time. Hopper's crew have repaired the ship and they can leave at any time. The Doctor ushers the others out as he sets up a circuit to electrify the control panel and the doors, to prevent anyone from entering the city again. The Cybercontroller, however, is still alive, and lurches forward. Outside, Toberman uses his bare hands to shut the doors, struggling with the Cybercontroller one last time. He succeeds, completing the circuit, and both he and the Cybercontroller are electrocuted and killed. Parry and Hopper return to their ship after saying good-bye to the Doctor and his companions. No one notices a lone cybermat, moving along the ground outside the doors to the city…

Cast

Crew

References

  • The Doctor has a book with a picture of a cybermat in it, but is unfamiliar with them.
  • The Cybermen have been frozen for 500 years, and they are familiar with the Doctor. The Moonbase is referenced.
  • Telos is the home planet of the Cybermen. See Mondas.
  • The Doctor says he is 450 years old. He tells Victoria he has to try hard to remember his family.
  • The Doctor says that he 'perfected' the TARDIS, which appears to land like a spaceship: 'Something came down over there.'
  • There are two sizes of cybermat.
  • Telos has a rarefied atmosphere.
  • The Doctor is unusually manipulative in this story; it is only because of his intervention that the expedition is able to get into the base, and he is also indirectly responsible for opening the hatch.

Story Notes

  • In this story the cybermats were remote controlled and pull back and go.
  • The working titles for this story were The Ice Tombs of Telos and The Cybermen Planet.
  • This serial was believed lost in 1978 (when the BBC's film archive was first properly audited, although it is absent on earlier 1976 listings) until film telerecordings of all four episodes were returned to the BBC by the Hong Kong television company ATV (formerly called RTV) in late 1991. The serial was released, to much fan excitement and with a specially recorded introduction by director Morris Barry, on VHS in May 1992.
  • Toberman was originally intended to be deaf, hence his lack of significant speech; his hearing aid would foreshadow his transformation into a Cyberman. These elements were included in the novelisation.
  • Actress Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) was married to producer Peter Bryant. Frazer Hines, who did not recognize Cooklin in her make up and costume, inadvertently flirted with her.
  • This is the earliest Patrick Troughton era serial, and the only serial featuring Deborah Watling, to exist in its entirety.
  • Peter Bryant, who had previously been assistant to Gerry Davis and been newly promoted to script editor on the preceding story, was allowed to produce this serial in order to prove that he could take over from Innes Lloyd as producer later on in the season. Bryant's own assistant, Victor Pemberton acted as script editor on this serial, but left the series after production of the serial was finished, deciding that he didn't want to be a script editor. When Bryant's eventual promotion to producer came, Derrick Sherwin would become script editor.
  • Shirley Cooklin's character in this serial, Kaftan, was written especially for her by Gerry Davis.
  • In the remastered DVD release, the wires holding up the cyberman that Toberman tosses are clearly visible.

Ratings

  • Episode 1 - 6.0m viewers.
  • Episode 2 - 6.4m viewers.
  • Episode 3 - 7.2m viewers.
  • Episode 4 - 7.4m viewers.

Myths

  • The only surviving copy of this story is slightly edited. (The prints in the BBC's archives are complete and unedited.)

Location Filming

  • Most of the story was recorded in Lime Grove Studio D, with additional recording at Ealing Studios, with the scenes on the surface of Telos recorded at Gerrards Cross Sand and Gravel Pit at Waspey's Woods in Buckinghamshire.

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • In episode one the Doctor and Jamie hold one of the tomb doors closed with their feet.
  • The Cybercontroller uses a visible harness to lift Toberman over his head.
  • Toberman returns the favour by spinning a dummy Cybercontroller.
  • The Cybermen retreat into their tombs backwards, the film having been reversed.
  • Kaftan and Klieg are locked in the weapon testing room, complete with deadly weapon. (The room features a psychedelic target that can hypnotise humans, with a 'subliminal centre you're trained to see', which is not a very Cyberman sort of thing.)
  • Would Victoria really be able to shoot a Cybermat with a handgun?

Continuity

DVD, Video, and Other Releases

DVD Releases

File:Mm-dvd.jpg
File:Mm-dvd2.jpg

Released as Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen, this was the first of the releases for 2002 and marked the first photomontage cover art by Clayton Hickman which replaced the generic photo cover art of earlier releases from this point on.

Released:

PAL - BBC DVD - BBCDVD1032
NTSC - Warner Video E1181

Notes:

  • The UK DVD release was rated PG, due to a mistaken attribution of "some mild sex, nudity"
  • The American DVD cover mistakenly credits the writing of this story to Robert Holmes. This happened due to a previous DVD release cover being used as a template.[citation needed]
  • The DVD contains a VidFIREd clip from the story as an Easter Egg. This was included as a test in order to determine how successfully the VidFIRE process would survive MPEG-2 encoding.

Contents:

Video Releases

Mm-video.jpg

Released as Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen, the video was rushed to release after its recovery from Hong Kong at the end of 1991.

Released:

PAL - BBC Video BBCV4772
NTSC- Warner Video E1181

Notes: The video includes a special video interview with director Morris Barry, speaking about its recent recovery.

External links


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